Suresh Naidu, Eric A. Posner, and Glen Weyl will be honored for their article “Antitrust Remedies for Labor Market Power,” 132 Harv. L. Rev. 536 (2018). Although the antitrust laws prohibit firms from restricting competition in labor markets as in product markets, the government does little to address the labor market problem, and private litigation has been rare and mostly unsuccessful. One reason is that the analytic methods for evaluating labor market power in antitrust contexts are far less sophisticated than the legal rules used to judge product market power. To remedy this asymmetry, the authors propose methods for judging the effects of mergers on labor markets, and extend their approach to other forms of anticompetitive practices undertaken by employers against workers.

Jose Azar, Martin C. Schmalz, and Isabel Tecu will be honored for their article “Anticompetitive Effects of Common Ownership,” 73 J. of Finance 1513 (2018). Many competitors are jointly held by a small set of large institutional investors. Theory predicts that common ownership of competitors can reduce firms’ incentives to compete. Using an empirical study of the U.S. airline industry, the authors find that changes in common ownership concentration in a given airline route are associated with changes in ticket prices in the same route. By conducting a large number of placebo and robustness tests, the authors are able to reject many of the alternatives to the inference that common ownership causes higher prices. The authors conclude that a hidden social cost—reduced product market competition—accompanies the private benefits of diversification and good governance.

The six winners will share a $12,000 prize and will each receive an inscribed original artwork created by Lori Milstein.

In addition, this year’s award selection committee has conferred six category awards, as follows:

This year’s award selection committee consisted of Zachary Caplan, Associate at Berger & Montague, P.C.; Warren Grimes, Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School; John Kirkwood, Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law; Robert Lande, Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law; Beth Farmer, Professor of Law at Pennsylvania State University; Roger Noll, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Stanford University; and Daniel A. Small, Partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC. Note: John Kirkwood and Robert Lande, though committee members, did not participate in the final deliberations because their own articles were under consideration.

About the Award:

The Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award was created through a trust established in honor of the late Jerry S. Cohen, an outstanding trial lawyer and antitrust scholar. It is administered by the law firm he founded, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

The award honors the best antitrust writing published during the prior year that is consistent with the values that animated Jerry S. Cohen’s professional life: a genuine concern for economic justice, the dispersal of economic power, effective limitations upon economic power, and the vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws.